"Well, you won't say anything about it, will you, Janice, if I come and clean up the kitchen?"
"Well," said Janice for a third time, "let's see you do it. I won't promise until the kitchen is cleaned."
But Arlo Junior went off with a grin on his face. He knew Janice would not tell if he kept his share of the agreement.
Janice was anxious to know how Delia, the new girl, was getting on with the housework. There was a strong smell of scorching vegetables the moment Janice opened the back door. The kitchen was empty, but the pots on the stove foretold the fact that dinner was in preparation at least two hours before it was necessary.
And the vegetables! Janice ran to save them. There was a roaring fire under them; but it was the water that had boiled over, after all. Delia knew nothing, it was evident, about simmering vegetables. Boiling them furiously was her way.
"Oh, dear," sighed the girl, "I wonder if anything else can happen to the Days! There must be something the matter with me or someone would sometime do something right in this house. Daddy's dinner will not be fit to eat.
"That book on dietary that I got out of the library and tried to read said that good cooking was most important. I don't know, for I guess I didn't understand much of the book—not even of that part I read—but I do know that a well-cooked meal tastes better than a dried-out one. Oh, dear!"
Janice shoved the pots back on the stove, and shut off the drafts so that the fire would die down. She
wondered where Delia could be. She had not seen her outside the house. She ran up the back stairs and looked in the girl's room before she went to her own.
Delia was not upstairs. Janice could not see that much had been done in the way of housework—at least on the upper floor. Then, suddenly, she discovered where the new girl was.